She and Dick had made friends in the Mexican village with Vicente Garcia and her brother Joe, and with Nico Martinez, next door to the Garcias', and her brothers. Even when they all picked beans in the morning, during the vacation from sugar beets, there were these long, cool evenings for play.
Grandma complained. "I don't know what else to blame for Dick's untidy ways. Hair sticking up five ways for Christmas, and fingernails in mourning and the manners of a heathen. I'm afraid that sore on his hand may be something catching. Those Garcias and Martinezes of yours . . . !"
"The Garcias maybe, but not the Martinezes," Rose-Ellen objected. "Gramma, you go to their houses sometime and see."
One evening Grandma did. Jimmie had come excitedly leading home the quaintest of all the babies of the Mexican village, Vicente Garcia's little sister. He had found her balancing on her stomach on the bank of the ditch. Three years old, she was, and slim and straight, with enormous eyes and a great tangle of sunburned brown curls. Her dress made her quainter still, for it was low-necked and sleeveless, and came to her tiny ankles so that she looked like a child from an old-fashioned picture.
Grandma and Rose-Ellen and Jimmie walked home with her, and Grandma's eyes widened at sight of the two-roomed Garcia house. Ten people lived and slept, ate and cooked there, and it looked as if it had never met a broom or soapsuds.
The Martinez home was different, perfectly neat, even to the scrubbed oilcloth on the table. Afterwards Grandma said the bottoms of the pans weren't scoured, but she couldn't feel to blame Mrs. Martinez, with five young ones besides the new baby to look after. When the Beechams went home, Mrs. Martinez gave them a covered dish of enchiladas.
Even Grandma ate those enchiladas without hesitation, though they were so peppery that she had to cool her mouth with frequent swallows of water. They were made of tidily rolled tortillas (Mexican corn-cakes, paper-thin), stuffed with meat and onion and invitingly decorated with minced cheese and onion tops. They looked, smelled and tasted delicious.
In turn, Grandma sent biscuits, baked in the Dutch oven Grandpa had bought her. Grandma had always been proud of her biscuits.
In July the Mexican children took Dick and Rose-Ellen to the vacation school held every summer in one of the town churches. The Beechams were not surprised at Nico's dressed-up daintiness when she called for them. Grandma said she was perfect, from the ribbon bows on her shining hair to the socks that matched her smart print dress. But it was surprising to see Vicente come from the cluttered, dirty Garcia rooms, almost as clean and sweet as Nico, though with nails more violently red.
The Beechams found it a problem to dress at all in their chicken-apartment. Dick tried to get ready in one room and Rose-Ellen in the other, and everything she wanted was in his room and everything he wanted in hers. Their small belongings had to be packed in boxes, and all the boxes emptied out to find them. Clean clothes--still unironed, of course--had to be hung up, and they could not be covered well enough so flies and moth-millers did not speck them.